


The Kids Are Not Okay

by Dumbothepatronus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Children, Coronavirus references, Dragon Pox, F/M, Family, Good Weasley Family (Harry Potter), Howlers (Harry Potter), Motherhood, POV Molly Weasley, POV Third Person Limited, Pandemics, Pre-Canon, The Burrow (Harry Potter), distance learning, toddler Ginny Weasley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:06:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23914285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dumbothepatronus/pseuds/Dumbothepatronus
Summary: The Dragon Pox Pandemic has left Molly Weasley in a rut, but it'll be ok. She's homeschooled her children before and she will do it again. What she doesn't take into account is Charlie's adventurous spirit and taste for mischief.
Relationships: Arthur Weasley/Molly Weasley
Comments: 5
Kudos: 23





	The Kids Are Not Okay

Quarantine, Day 1

The faces at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters hid; they hid behind bandanas, behind scarves and Muggle surgical masks, despite the evidence that the barriers did little good. Dragon Pox was magic-proof. If bubble-head charms and magical shields didn’t keep it at bay, it certainly wouldn’t be stopped by a strip of cloth.

Still, Molly Weasley did her duty. What if Ginny, sweet Ginny with the chubby cheeks and waddling step, fell ill?

She’d never forgive herself.

Students filed off the train, one by one. Six feet apart. McGonagall’s wand passed over each child once, twice—thrice for the grimiest ones. It sprayed the minty mist of a sanitizing spell on blue jeans and sweaters, on hands and faces.

It seemed like hours before Bill marched over, eyes forlorn, followed by Charlie, whose bouncy step seemed out of place amidst the sterile gloom.

“Mum! Did you hear? School’s canceled!” Charlie grinned up at her. “You know what that means? Broom time.” His hands gripped an imaginary handle and his lips made a breathy whoosh as if he were soaring through the open sky. 

Molly scowled behind her hand-knitted face mask. “Now Charlie, just because you’ll be at home doesn’t mean you won’t have school.” 

If anything was crucial in a young wizard’s life, it was a quality education. Molly would succumb to the pandemic herself before she allowed any child of hers to fall behind in their studies. “I homeschooled you for your primary years, and I will do it again.”

If it wasn’t for the nagging pinch of doubt, the one that worried she couldn’t possibly measure up to the skills and resources of an entire team of Hogwarts professors, she would have been excited. But at least Hogwarts was brewing up a plan; something to keep her boys on track. Until then, she would do her best.

  
  


Quarantine, Day 3

If there was anything Molly prided herself on, it was her resourcefulness. 

Not enough potatoes to feed her small army of a family? Easy. A multiplying spell filled all nine plates.

Arthur’s work robes getting shabby about the seams? Simple. Mending spells were quick and functional.

But of all the resources at her disposal, she especially treasured her copy of  _ Homeschooling for Hogwarts: A Modern Guide to Your Witch or Wizard’s Primary Education.  _ She’d studied it, respected it, and adhered to it daily since the moment Charlie turned four.

It might be old, and Bill and Charlie might have outgrown it. But with a cup of ingenuity and a pinch of magic, she’d make it fit.

Molly swirled her wand through the air, and a bell clanged throughout the house and grounds of the Burrow. A great pounding of feet—from upstairs, from the front porch, from the kitchen—thundered through the air as six children and one toddler rushed to the dining room table. 

“Excellent! Welcome to day two of homeschool. Today we’ll be studying Dragon Pox, its treatments, and its symptoms.” 

To Ginny and Ron, seated in chairs with elongated legs so their pudgy hands reached the tabletop, she issued coloring sticks and parchment. Fred and George were tasked with writing “Dragon Pox” on a handwriting ledger. Percy dove into a book from the attic about an epidemic from the Medieval era, and Bill and Charlie penned essays and practiced disinfecting charms.

It was a lot, but she could handle this. It was fun, even, to discuss remedies with her older children, and see the light in their eyes as they mastered the charms.

But even so, Molly worried. Was this enough? Could she ever do enough? It was so much simpler when they were younger, when she didn’t need to worry about potions techniques and transfiguration theory. But it wasn’t forever. In a few days, Hogwarts would enact their “distance learning” plan, and everything would be ok. They’d get the training they needed.

With a deep, steadying breath, Molly turned her attention to the twins. “George, take that coloring stick out of your brother’s ear. Now let me see what you’ve done.”

  
  


Quarantine, Day 7

“Ok. So Charlie has History of Magic via two-way enchanted mirror at nine o’clock for one hour. Flying lessons are at nine-thirty… wait. That can’t be right.” Molly scowled at the endless roll of parchment in her hands, then glanced longingly at  _ Homeschooling for Hogwarts,  _ its worn cover buried beneath a pile of owl post. 

“Great! I’ll skive off History of Magic and go straight to flying, since I obviously can’t do both!” Charlie bounced off the couch and headed for the front door.

“I don’t think so, young man! You’ll park yourself on this sofa and listen to your professor.”

“Aw, Mum, Professor Binns is a total snooze-fest. I never learn anything from—”

“Fred! George! Leave your sister alone. Charlie, I don’t have time to argue about this. Now let’s see about Bill—oh, no. Bill was due for Transfiguration fifteen minutes ago! Let me see that mirror.”

Bill trudged over and held out the rectangular pane of glass that was to be their only window to the outside world. She ran her fingers over the incantation instructions—complicated, but nothing Molly Weasley couldn’t handle. She pointed her wand, opened her mouth, and—

“MUUUUUM! It’s too loud. I cannot focus!” Percy had both his hands clamped over his ears and his eyes squeezed shut. 

Molly pinched the bridge of her nose, hard, and counted to five. This was going to be ok. It was only the first day. They’d get into a routine, and the chaos would settle. If she survived that long without breaking those blasted mirrors.

“Percy, take your book to the back garden where it’s quiet. Bill, as soon as your mirror is ready to go, I want you up in your room.”

As if things weren’t wild enough, Aurthur chose that moment to poke his head down from his make-shift home office in the master bedroom. “Everything ok down there? I heard shouting.”

“Everything’s fine! Everything’s fine.” But her words sounded feeble and unconvincing, even to her own ears.

  
  


Quarantine, Day 14

“Bill!” Molly stuck a finger in  _ Homeschooling for Hogwarts _ and marched up the creaky stairs, leaving the younger children to their coloring parchments. “Do you have everything you need for Potions today?”

Bill sat on his bed, his sullen eyes roving down a lengthy list of ingredients. “Yeah. It’s fine.”

“Why so sad, if everything’s fine?”

She snatched the list and scanned it; the sooner she resolved this, the sooner she could check on the other children. “Black sage? That’s five galleons a bunch! Even if the apothecaries weren’t closed, how can he really expect us to—”

“It’s fine, Mum, I’ll just use white.”

“It won’t be as effective. You won’t get full marks.”

Bill’s shoulders slumped. Before the quarantine, he’d been at the top of his class. Every day since, Molly had watched as his marks slid a little lower in the owl-post progress reports. 

“I’ll owl Professor Snape,” said Molly, her voice final.

“Mum, no! That’s so embarrassing. Besides, it won’t help. Snape doesn’t care.”

“Well he’ll have to, if—” A crash, sharp and piercing from the lower floor, stopped Molly mid-sentence. “I’ll be right back.”

Her feet flew down the steps, towards the sound of nervous giggles and delighted squeals. She followed the noise to the kitchen, and there her heart stopped dead. Shattered glass and pounds of flour sprinkled the floorboards. And there amid the mayhem stood four small children, powdered from nose to knees.

“Fred! George! What in Godric’s name have you gotten into?” 

Ginny grabbed two handfuls of flour and tossed them into the air. “‘Snowy! Make snowy!”

A crash from upstairs followed by hurried footsteps sent a shiver of anxiety down her spine. Charlie. Charlie’s room was above the kitchen. Molly shut her eyes tight and screamed. She allowed herself three full seconds of release before slamming the door on her frustration and pulling out her wand. She hated screaming. When she screamed, she sounded far too much like her mother.

The flour was ruined now, speckled with germs from the children’s fingers and laced with dirt from the kitchen floor she’d neglected to sweep. If there was a spell that decontaminated powders, she’d never heard of it. But as she vanished the mess, and with it the main ingredient for that week’s bread, she milked comfort from the soothing trickle of magic leaving her body. If she couldn’t make bread, they would eat crackers. She could do this. She could handle this. Things could be worse.

  
  


Quarantine, Day 19

Bill and Charlie were upstairs, attending their classes through their enchanted mirrors. The younger children sat around the table, peacefully completing their homeschool work. Molly took a deep, restful breath.

For the first time since the quarantine, her house was quiet. With a triumphant grin, she marched to the kitchen to fix herself a cup of tea.

“Oh, hello, dear.” Arthur spun to look at her, his arms full of stale crackers from the box they’d been multiplying, and re-multiplying, since the markets had shut down. He probably intended to eat them all over their bedsheets. “Quiet today, isn’t it?”

“Everything’s under control. I told you, it might take a while, but I’d figure it out.”

“I never doubted you for a second.”

A tentative sense of success crept into Molly’s chest. Maybe, despite everything, she wasn’t a total failure. 

Then the howler came, and all her triumph flew right out the kitchen window. 

“MOLLY WEASLEY!” It was McGonagall’s voice that screamed through the scarlet parchment, that reverberated off the close-set kitchen walls. Molly couldn’t think of a worse humiliation. “KINDLY CONTROL YOUR CHILD. CHARLIE HAS BEEN A DISRUPTION IN MY CLASS SINCE DAY ONE OF DISTANCE LEARNING. IF HIS BEHAVIOR DOES NOT IMPROVE, SUSPENSION WILL BE IMMINENT.”

It would have been funny if it wasn’t so terrible. How does one get suspended from their own bedroom?

Molly slammed her still-empty tea mug onto the counter and spun towards the stairs, but Arthur caught her arm. “Hey. If it’s not working, maybe we should consider alternatives.” He nodded to the homeschooling bible, lying on the counter next to her. 

Longing seized her heart for five whole seconds—longing for the good old days, back when she’d had control over the curriculum, when the Burrow had been full of smiles instead of strife—before she shoved it away. 

“They can’t just quit school.” She stomped up the stairs; there was a certain first-year who needed a stern talking-to.

  
  
  


Quarantine, Day 20

Molly put a containment charm on the living room and turned on the radio to a children’s program for the younger ones. If she had to sit next to Charlie to make sure he was showing his teachers the proper respect, well, that was just what she would do. 

At first, she didn’t understand what McGonagall was talking about. He looked bored out of his mind, his eyes glued to the ceiling and his chin in his hands, but he wasn’t being naughty. After half an hour of Professor Binns’ droning voice, Molly rolled her eyes.

This was a waste of time. She’d obviously lectured Charlie’s misbehavior right out of him, and she was needed elsewhere. 

“All right, Charlie. Be good. I’ll check on you later.”

It turned out to be a mistake. When “later” came around, she found him standing on his bare mattress, twirling his wand at his bedsheets. They wiggled and writhed in the air in a vague shape Molly guessed was meant to be a dragon. 

“Charles Prewett Weasley—now you’re making me mad! I leave you here for an hour tops, after sitting next to you for ages and this is what you do the moment I’m gone? I cannot believe you! For shame.” 

His eyes shot to her face, which must have been twisted into something monstrous, for his wand clattered to the floor. Molly’s boots crashed against the creaky floorboards on her way to snatch the mirror, where Professor Snape stared back at her with eyes hard as coal. “I’m so sorry, Professor,” she said. “It won’t happen again.”

Snape sneered back through the glass. “See that it doesn’t.”

Molly sent Charlie a glare so severe, he cringed and crumpled into a seated position on his bed. She spent the next half-hour listening to a horrendously dull lecture on the properties of bat’s blood while Charlie stared out the window. She swallowed; this was it. She’d reached rock bottom, but from the bottom, she would rise.

  
  
  


Quarantine, Day 22

Six howlers later, it was clear she’d been wrong;  _ this _ was the worst. It was the actual worst, and she had no idea how to make it better. 

She pushed Aurthur’s work things off the bed and slumped into it, exhausted. Her pillow, thick with the scent of decades of motherly fears, found its way over her face. But even it couldn’t drown out the ghosts of the arguments that rang in her ears.

Percy’s meltdowns about the constant chaos.

Bill’s frustration about the skills he struggled to master through a mirror.

The crying and screaming of the younger children, who begged for attention she had no time to give. 

And Charlie. Her once bright-eyed, adventurous child whose face had gone grey around the edges; who now fought her every minute of his miserable existence. No amount of dish-washing, floor scrubbing, or grounding had corrected his behavior. After all, how do you ground a pre-teen when he’s already under house arrest? 

She would have thought Minerva would have a little sympathy, given Molly’s daily apology letters and the way she hovered over Charlie’s shoulder, but apparently not. And as much as she begged, as much as she pleaded, she couldn't make Charlie focus. He was a caged dragon, clawing at the corners and blowing fire against the bars.

“Molly? What’s with the pillow? ” She heard Aurthur’s smile, even through the layers of fabric and heavy down.

“I can’t do this anymore. I’m two howlers away from moving into the Forbidden Forest.” Desperation filled her; swallowed her whole and leaked out her eyes. 

“Well, how do we fix it? What’s not working?”

Molly groaned and pulled the pillow off of her face. “Everything. But mostly Charlie. He’s not learning anything, he’s constantly frustrated, and he’s taking up all my time and patience.”

Arthur shrugged. “So quit.”

“We cannot simply quit school!”

“Molly, you’re one of the best teachers I know. Why not homeschool him yourself, just for this year? You say he’s not learning, and I think you’re right. Charlie’s such a hands-on kid, it makes me itch just to picture him staring at a mirror for eight hours a day.”

Molly pressed her hands against her face. If she pulled Charlie out of Hogwarts and completed his first year through homeschool, it would make her life so much easier. She could set her homeschooling book aside, tailor the younger kid’s lessons around his, and give all her children the attention they needed. No more sitting next to him, supervising his mirror meetings. No more fighting. No more judgemental howlers. It would be like last year when she still taught him at home.

“But what about Bill?” Molly asked. “Frustrations aside, he’s mostly doing fine.”

“Then let him continue. What this family needs most is to stop worrying about conventions and do what works for us. If that means distance-learning for Bill, fantastic. If it also means back to homeschooling for Charlie, so be it. You’re a Gryffindor; be bold. Stand up for what’s right for our family.”

As Arthur spoke, the desperation that filled Molly’s chest dissipated. What she found instead, buried deep beneath her fears of inadequacy, was resolve. All wasn’t lost, for she could do enough. She could be enough—she was Molly Weasley, fearless Gryffindor and mender of broken things. 

“Thank you, Arthur. Sometimes, I swear I’d be lost without you.”

He shot her a sheepish smile. “What can I say? I’m always right.”

For the first time since the start of the pandemic, Molly laughed. A deep, true laugh that shook her shoulders along with the old bones of the house. 

Arthur pressed a finger to her lips. “Shh, Mollywobbles. You’ll wake Ginny.” 

“I’m sorry, it’s just—” She took a deep breath and swallowed her silliness. “I wish I could see the look on McGonagall’s face.”

“When you send her notice of Charlie’s withdrawal?”

Molly nodded. “When I send her my howler.”

**Author's Note:**

> Big thank you to Bex and Hazuzu for beta'ing this story for me. Thank you to everyone who has read it; I'd love to hear your thoughts!


End file.
